RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico -- A final-round, five-under 67 from senior Lion Kim(Lake Mary, Fla./Lake Mary Prep School) helped the University of Michigan men's golf team close today (Tuesday, Feb. 22) with a two-under 286, lifting the Wolverines to a 12th-place finish with an 888 total at the Puerto Rico Classic at the Rio Grande Country Club's River Course.

After opening Sunday (Feb. 20) with a 300, the Wolverines followed with a 302 on Monday (Feb. 21) to stay in the 15th position at 602 with 18 holes remaining in the first stroke-play event of the spring. Opening with two birdies in his first three holes today, Kim, who tied for 31st with a two-over 218 (76-75-67), added four additional birdies and a bogey in his final round to pick up his 11th sub-par round this season.

Senior Alexander Sitompul(Jakarta, Indonesia/Bradenton Prep Academy [Fla.]), junior Matt Thompson(Battle Creek, Mich./Lakeview HS) and sophomore Jack Schultz(Whitefish Bay, Wis./Whitefish Bay HS) each shot final-round 73s for their best scores of the event. In all, U-M's five-man team posted 18 birdies in the final round after combining for a total of 22 birdies and one eagle the previous two rounds.

Freshman Joey Garber(Petoskey, Mich./Petoskey) paced U-M's play during the first two rounds and closed with a top-50 finish as he was 47th at 221 (74-73-74). Sitompul closed tied for 57th at 224 (74-77-73), Schultz tied for 63rd at 227 (76-78-73), while Thompson finished tied for 65th at 228 (78-77-73).

The Wolverines will have just about a week off before heading to California for their spring break training trip, which opens with U-M playing at USC's Collegiate Invitational, Sunday and Monday (Feb. 28-March 1). The 54-hole event will be held at the North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, Calif.

 Lion Kim shot a 67 for the fifth time in his career. The round tally was also the 19th sub-70 round of his career.

 Lion Kim has finished as the top Wolverine in his last four Puerto Rico Classics and snapped his streak of closing among the top 25. Overall, Kim has now led U-M in three of the six events this season.

Michigan Head Coach Andrew SappOn the Puerto Rico Classic ... "This was a great opportunity for us, as will be the USC event, to play a lot of top-20 programs. If we want to be in the top 20 ourselves we need to beat some of those teams. Unfortunately, we just played nowhere near what we are capable of in the first two rounds. There is no mistake about it. We played very poorly. It was good to come back in the final round and Lion (Kim) carried us with his five-under 67. Everyone played better and that was good to see. It was nice to see we could bounce back and pass at least a few teams. However, finishing 12th in this tournament is not what we had in mind going into it.

"It's going to be hard to take away a lot of positives from this, but I would rather finish a tournament with an under-par score than start with it. Hopefully, this will help us build momentum going into our next event in California. We were able to see some improvements and guys really battled. We just had a lot of big numbers during the first two days. The River Course is called the river course for a reason; unfortunately, we found the river too many times this week. We will move forward from this and head to another strong event. It will be good to get back out there because we know we can play a lot better than this."